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Cats

Hello again from Sherwood - Friday afternoon and almost sundowners time.

Back last year around July-August I took Mrs S3ute and a family friend across to Africa and had an extensive roam across my old stamping grounds in Zimbabwe, Zambia and South Africa. I did post a few snippets from that trip at the time but promised to add a bit more at a later date. But circumstances subsequently construed to make doing that less of an imperative and it went by the wayside.

Well, I suppose a good bit of the previous musings covered lions, their victims (esp. the half chewed Andre) and whatnot. This topic came to the fore again at last week's sundowners when during some polite discourse a colleague threw down the challenge of "where's yer fekking lions then"?

Thinking it over for a minute or so I handed over my iPhone and said "here I guess":

Caught in the act on the edge of Kruger at the Sabie Sands, these two cavortees had been at it for several hours and looked to be prepared to give it a few more goes before going off to kill something or other.

I've seen the S3cat do something like this bit on many occasions but had put it down to simply lazing about - but never one to let a learning experience go begging I was informed that this particular manoeuvre is intended to help the wayward seeds find their target.

Give me a home among the Gum trees....

Well not really.

Here's me musing over what a strange animal old Gumtree is - not the billy tea and smoke variety, but rather the e-site which seems to operate like eBay for stolen goods. Perhaps not stolen in a literal sense but treated like they were in any given discourse leading up to a possible transaction.

What got me here? I will disclose that later but for now I can tell you that my Gumtree experiences have bordered on the truly whacky.

Starting off in all innocence a couple of years ago I made the mistake of advertising a complete set of Series seats (6 bits) for $90 - as background this contained one cushion that I had previously purchased from an AULRO-SLOW native for $45, and they were not torn or worn out. So, I thought this might be on the conservative side of things. Well after some time and several hints that I was being a bit greedy I let them go for $40...

Next off the rank was an unused digital SLR camera body that originally cost around $750. Asking $300 for it plus the chargers etc I was accosted by young Sanjay from Canberra who gave me what for as a racist for not selling it to him for $100 plus a lens. Needless to say I didn't, but it was instructive.

Well I'll move on past the heavy duty brush cutter etc that received a few sight unseen $10 offers - given to a best mate out of pique there were a few more run ins - but none more challenging than my encounter with young Russell from Woy Woy.

This one is a killer and needs some explaining because out of a thousand or so transactions on the internet this came the closest to a complete failure. It goes like this - having sold the S3 boat I decided to sell off some boxed and unused parts that had never been fitted to it, including LED navigation lights, a NZ built switch panel and a GME CD MP3 player face value in excess of $600. Put the navigation lights on Gumtree at $45 (half price) and the usual chorus of bottom feeders turned up offering the usual $5-$10. But amongst these appeared Russell who spoke very politely and wanted them for his yacht building project - no quibble as he recognised the brand and the good deal. Now fool as I am I happened to mention the other bits and sent photos etc to which I got an affirmative will buy the lot for $260 - too good to be true. Well, I boxed them up and took them to the post office ready for shipment once the funds had been transferred to my account. Now, bring on the milk of human kindness but I recalled that Russell had mentioned that his boatbuilder was keen to fit the kit that week and receiving an email that the funds had just been transferred I told the postmaster to speed it on its way..... I suspect you know what's coming but after three weeks there was nary a sign of the funds. So, a message or two were sent of increasing stridency hinting at an expectation of being paid - falling on deaf ears as it happens. So, a late night phone call revealed that it was all a mix up and the funds would soon be forthcoming - good intent possibly but nothing came of it. So, a threat of taking action to recover the parts or funds winged its way to Woy Woy and after another two weeks a deposit for 50% of the funds appeared. Some time passed including a note of bemusement as to how and when 50% of the debt had been agreed to without apparent action - so another threat (hollow of course since the small claims fee was a multiple of the debt - in NSW the odds favour the con) and, at last after nearly 5 months, the balance appeared.

OK, but why muse over Gumtree now?

Well this morning I decided to relist a good condition catcher for a Victa mower for $35 - recalling that pricing on Gumtree is not unlike the haggling scene from Life of Brian. Mid-stubby up pops a message from Les and Irene telling me that these can be bought at the tip for $2 - in fact, they had done so. Now, assuming that the well meaning Les or Irene were in all likelihood suggesting that I try the anatomically impossible, I responded to the effect that they should have bought two of them. Well, this didn't go down well with the self-appointed consumer watchdogs and the subsequent responses from L&I did little to dispel the suspicion that I was a rum sort of fellow taken to ripping off ill-informed lawnmower persons. Possibly true, but what the heck?

So there you have it - Gumtree has outlived its usefulness for at least one more citizen of the planet.

Ransom

Hello again from Brisbane.

Well, the time has come.

Just got the infamous ransom message from Photobucket that has created a bit of excitement up and down the various AULRO sites. Basically, it says the terms and conditions of using PB preclude using the site to post your images on 3rd party sites - AULRO is basically one such site. While the tone of the message is of the "tut tut you've been a naughty boy breaking our usage rules" nature, what is less well known is that PB only recently changed those terms of use conditions and then only via a link rather than a specific warning of what they were going to do.

Now, the ransom component is that the recalcitrant user can save their collection and avoid having all previous posted images deleted (basically each picture is replaced by a warning that the space was previously occupied by an image that contravened the PB terms of use) if they take out a $400 per year plan......

Well my response was to mutter something phoenetically like "Photobucket" and I won't be passing over the demanded dosh. So, by the time you might be reading this the many previous posts will very likely have been already vandalised and barely worth accessing. Being the case, there really isn't much point in keeping the threads going.

Adieu

Following on from the last post I can see that Photobucket has carried through with its ransom hijack and deleted all of the photos in my threads.

Well, at risk of incurring a fine from the moderators I don't propose to hide the following smut words with euphemistic dots or dashes (e.g. Photobucket can go f--k itself or sc..w Photobucket).

Rather, (and here is an apology to the wimmen n'kids in the room) I am more than happy to suggest that Photobucket (or more precisely the venal trolls that own it) can go screw itself(themselves). Interesting aside, my attempt at including the f word got the euphemistic four dashes anyway - hence the rivet word as a proxy.

It would be a terrible thing to lose this thread Neil.. makes me smile every time I come in here and read your ramblings.

Perhaps you could start a MK2 version; up to now Smugmug has treated me well for photo storage and (as yet) has not alluded to ransom of any kind. It is owned, or at least used to be, by the same entity who owns ADVRider forum. With a high percentage of those inmates using it, I'm sure there would be hell to pay if there were any ransom attempts of that same sort.

Hard to know....

Originally Posted by OneOff

Do keep it up.

Peter.

Peter,

Hello from Brisbane - thanks for the kind words.

Really not sure what or where the musings might go. To be honest my African and Asian wanderings which primarily spurred the thread are now largely behind me - may be some future engagement in Malawi and Zimbabwe, but I wouldn't bet the S3 yurt on it - and the cast that helped it along including the half-chewed Andre and dusky companion Godfrey have also largely moved on. So, the Photobucket debacle, a recent retirement and a year coping with a major health challenge for one of the S3 juniors were probably a timely prod for a bit of reflection.

On the odd occasion that Mrs S3ute might bless my absence the thoughts have drifted to doing a series of pub crawls around the region - 40 years of local field travel uncovered more than a few. Whether or not this morphs into a series of posted SLOW trips with some sort of dedicated thread remains something to be pondered over.

Being Friday, traditional sundowners day at the S3 yurt, that is something to muse over I suppose.

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